All you need to know about the 2024 World Cadet, Junior & U21 Championships in Venice

The most promising Karate athletes in the world gather next week in Venice (Italy) to clash for gold at the highly anticipated 2024 World Cadet, Junior & U21 Championships. The future stars of Karate will be crowned in Venice in the tournament scheduled from October 9 to 13.

WHAT

• The World Cadet, Junior & U21 Championships are the sport's most important age group event.    
• The tournament gathers the best young athletes in the world from cadet, junior and under-21 categories.   

WHERE

• The tournament occurs at the Palazzo del Turismo in Lido de Jesolo, Venice.
• One of the world's biggest youth Karate hubs, Italy hosts the most massive age-group event of the year, the Karate 1-Youth League in Venice, at the same venue where the World Championships will take place.

WHEN

• The event is scheduled from October 9 to 13.    
• The eliminations will be held from Wednesday 9 to Friday 11 (from 10.00 to 20:30 local time GMT +2)
• The bronze medal bouts and finals are scheduled on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 (from 10.00 to 19:00 on Saturday and from 10.00 to 15.45 on Sunday, local times GMT +2)  
• The Opening Ceremony is scheduled for Friday 11 at 18:00 (local time GMT +2)
• CLICK HERE to go to the full competition programme.

WHO

• Nearly 2000 athletes from 113 countries have registered to participate in the event.
• This tally represents a record-breaking number of participants in the age group World Championships and exceeds the count of competitors in previous editions of the event. Nearly 1800 athletes from 98 countries participated in the 2022 World Championships in Konya, while nearly 1500 athletes from 86 countries competed at the 2019 World Championships in Santiago. The 2017 edition in Tenerife gathered nearly 1700 competitors from 107 countries.
• In Venice, the powerhouse nations of Brazil and Turkiye present the largest delegations with 42 athletes each. Egypt, United States, Spain and hosts of Italy also compete with a big number of competitors as they all have 41 athletes in Venice.

HOW

• The competition follows an elimination and repechage format. Competitors compete in each category and qualify for the medal bouts on Saturday and Sunday.
• The eliminations of individual U21 Kata and team kata categories, as well as U21 Kumite will be held on Wednesday.
• Eliminations of Junior Kata and Kumite divisions will take place on Thursday, while the qualifying rounds of Cadet Kata and Kumite will be held on Friday.

WHAT ELSE

• The last edition of the event was held in 2022 in Konya (Turkiye). Japan topped the medal table of the event with 13 medals including 10 golds. Hosts of Turkiye and Egypt also registered successful performances with 12 medals each.

WATCH IT LIVE!

• The FINALS on Saturday and Sunday are available LIVE on the WKF YouTube channel. CLICK HERE to go to the WKF YouTube channel.  

2024 WORLD CADET, JUNIOR & U21 CHAMPIONSHIPS